Eating Back Exercise Calories

Eating calories back vs not seems to be pretty subjective, and depends on each person on whether or not it will be a successful weight loss strategy. My personal interpretation of it is that if you've burned a lot of exercise calories and you're still (honestly) hungry, then you can eat the exercise calories back and not be affecting your overall deficit or long term goals. Staying over 1200 calories is important though.

Personally, I use my hunger as a guide if I eat my exercise calories back or not.

Eating calories back vs not seems to be pretty subjective, and depends on each person on whether or not it will be a successful weight loss strategy. My personal interpretation of it is that if you've burned a lot of exercise calories and you're still (honestly) hungry, then you can eat the exercise calories back and not be affecting your overall deficit or long term goals. Staying over 1200 calories is important though.

Personally, I use my hunger as a guide if I eat my exercise calories back or not.

Well, my calorie goal is 1300, so any exercise I do is going to put my NET under 1200. I just don't see the point of working so hard to burn those calories if I'm just going to eat them back again.

what you'e missing is that you don't have to "burn" anything. You actually "burn" calories 24/7...the vast majority of your "burn" is just the energy required for you to be alive and functioning. Your calorie goal is a deficit from your theoretical NON EXERCISE maintenance calories (so long as you have properly set your activity level). In other words, if you did no exercise at all and just ate to your calorie goal, you would lose weight. Exercise is not required to lose weight...you don't have to "burn" anything.

When you exercise, your theoretical maintenance number would increase...so you could in turn eat more and still be at a deficit. If my maintenance is 2500 without exercise and I wanted to lose 1 Lb per week I'd have to eat 2000 calories (again, no exercise required). Now if I go burn 300 calories, my maintenance number would jump to 2800 calories...so I would have that same 500 calorie deficit eating 2300 calories to lose that same 1 Lb per week.

The point of exercise isn't to burn calories...that is just a bi-product. The point of exercise is fitness and overall health and well being...you will enjoy yourself a lot more when you can wrap your head around that.

Eating calories back vs not seems to be pretty subjective, and depends on each person on whether or not it will be a successful weight loss strategy. My personal interpretation of it is that if you've burned a lot of exercise calories and you're still (honestly) hungry, then you can eat the exercise calories back and not be affecting your overall deficit or long term goals. Staying over 1200 calories is important though.

Personally, I use my hunger as a guide if I eat my exercise calories back or not.

Well, my calorie goal is 1300, so any exercise I do is going to put my NET under 1200. I just don't see the point of working so hard to burn those calories if I'm just going to eat them back again.

what you'e missing is that you don't have to "burn" anything. You actually "burn" calories 24/7...the vast majority of your "burn" is just the energy required for you to be alive and functioning. Your calorie goal is a deficit from your theoretical NON EXERCISE maintenance calories (so long as you have properly set your activity level). In other words, if you did no exercise at all and just ate to your calorie goal, you would lose weight. Exercise is not required to lose weight...you don't have to "burn" anything.

When you exercise, your theoretical maintenance number would increase...so you could in turn eat more and still be at a deficit. If my maintenance is 2500 without exercise and I wanted to lose 1 Lb per week I'd have to eat 2000 calories (again, no exercise required). Now if I go burn 300 calories, my maintenance number would jump to 2800 calories...so I would have that same 500 calorie deficit eating 2300 calories to lose that same 1 Lb per week.

The point of exercise isn't to burn calories...that is just a bi-product. The point of exercise is fitness and overall health and well being...you will enjoy yourself a lot more when you can wrap your head around that.

That makes so much sense. Thank you!

A word of caution though...estimating calories burned through exercise can be tricky...especially if you're doing something other than just running or riding your bike or walking or whatever. Don't just look up your calories in some database and go with it...you should check what you think you're burning to a few different sources and go with the most conservative estimate (it's all an estimate)...and even then, you might want to knock of some % for error and/or to compensate for underestimating intake.

It can take awhile but pretty soon you get a pretty goo feel for what you're actually burning with your exercise and how much you should eat back. Really, the point of eating those calories back isn't necessarily to consume every last calorie...but to make sure you're giving your body some nutrients for recovery and repair. Exercise is good for you, but it also breaks down the body and energy (calories) and nutrients are required to repair the body.